Monsters (2010)

 "Amigos? These guys have guns!"

This low-budget debut from director Gareth Edwards, a native of my neighbouring town of Nuneaton, is quitely brilliant, leveraging its tiny budget to combine horror via suspense with arthouse, bordering on arthouse, techniques. The scenes feel semi-improvised, which improvs the effectveness enormously, This is a film which manages to be superb by aiming relatvely low yet hitting the target.

Critics have, er, criticised the core performances of Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, which I find bewildering. Both Andrew and Sam feel like real people and not Hollywood cyphers, and are all the more compelling for it. It also very much shows, not only in the camerawork, but also in the line delivery, that the scenes and dialogue are semi-improvised. This is enormously effective and removes the arificiality of scripted acting that we so often overlook. The characters feel real ro the extent that Andrew really is a bit of a creep, especially in a post-#MeToo context.

Thie whole premise- a NASA probe falling to Earh and releasing alien life into northern Mexico which is swidtly quarantined- is an obvious metaphor for refugees, particularly with the presence of a wall on the US southern border before Trump had even thought of such a very stupid idea. There's a nice little scene where out American protagonists are repped off by traffickers.

The film rather cleverly uses its low budget to its advantage, using television broadcasts and signs to build context to the world we see as Sam and Andrew make their way through the Infected Zone. The alien monsters are glimpsed only briefly until the end, using the devastation they leave in their wake to evoke their destructiveness. Only at the end do we see them as fully realised Lovecraftian horrors.

An excellent film. Not bad for a Codder.